Thursday, December 6, 2007

How to Make Pomegranate Molasses

I'm not exactly sure when I started hearing about pomegranate molasses, but it was such an interesting concept I had to try it out.

I'm a girl who loves regular ol' sorghum molasses. It's good stuff. It's especially good dripping out of a buttery biscuit.

I've not tried pomegranate molasses in a biscuit yet, but don't worry... I will soon!

Pomegranate molasses is a staple in middle eastern cooking. I don't do a lot of middle eastern cooking, but I love foods from that area. The molasses is a rich, thick syrup basically made from simply cooking down pomegranate juice.

This molasses can be used to make beverages, sauces, homemade marinades, salad dressings, etc...

You can also make appetizers by placing cream cheese chunks on crackers and drizzling the pomegranate molasses over them.

It's also excellent drizzled over meats such as chicken and pork, as I did last night.

You can also buy pomegranate molasses at a variety of online stores for exorbitant prices, but why would you do that, when you can easily make it right in your own kitchen for a fraction of the cost!

Here's how to make it:

Start with either fresh squeezed, or a bottle of fresh pomegranate juice.

You will need:

4 cups pomegranate juice

1/3 cup sugar

3 Tbsp. lemon juice

Mix 4 cups pomegranate juice with sugar and lemon juice. If you want a sweeter molasses, add more sugar, I prefer it on the tart side.

Boil in a medium sized sauce pan until mixture reduces to around 1 cup of liquid. This will take anywhere from 45 minutes - 1 hour and 15 minutes.

When the molasses has boiled down to just about 1 cup of thick liquid, let it cool. It will continue to thicken as it cools.

Use immediately in cooking, as a marinade, in salad dressings, beverages, etc...

I used this as a glaze over our boneless pork chops last night for dinner. (You can see Karen's Sweet Potatoes there, they were YUMMY!!) It was delicious!

Store leftover pomegranate molasses in a tightly sealed container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks!

I'd love to hear how you would use pomegranate molasses! Try it and let me know what you think!

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I am going to be posting a Gluten-Free ChristmasCookie Round Up on December 17th!

I will be zooming around the internet searching out gluten-free bloggers withchristmas cookie recipes and pics!

If you would like to specifically let me know about a cookie recipe on your site that you would like included in the roundup please email me at gingerlemon_girl(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Make sure to include the permalink of your cookie recipe and a picture if you have one!Thanks so much and I look forward to hearing from you!!